This is about How the ubiquitous social networks are changing our societal/cultural imperatives/norms.I'm not sure whether this is about technology/commercialisation as cultural evolution, or - what would seem to be, on the face of it - an evolutionary dead-end (in human cultural terms). Time will tell.

First off, look at this rather well-made video - as an example: (apologies if you find it cringeworthy/nauseating; I didn't make it.)

You can find lots more similar YouTube videos to the above. They are apparently part of a modern phenomenon of narcissistic self-promotion, and the likely drivers seem to be not very nice, and it's enabled by IT&T (Information Technology and Telecommunications).

Photos, videos or "stories" on Facebok, Instagram, YouTube, or other social networks are becoming a common avenue for people who are seemingly compulsively seeking validation from relatives, friends, or followers, and oftentimes they do that by publishing with videos, photos and hashtags.social media, throughout the duration of these events (as they occur) in their lives or their family's lives - whether it be, for example (say), their wedding, or honeymoon, or a birthday party, or a child's wobbling progress through pre-school kindergarten, or a holiday. The awfulness of having to suffer obligingly by sitting through a viewing of someone's family or holiday snapshots, post-holiday, is thus made worse by the thing having morphed into a sort of monstrously compelling cultural slave-driver for the holidaymaker/honeymooner.

The planning and preparation for, and the time spent on the ongoing scene-shooting for an event and then publishing/posting the photo and video shots, together with appropriate text comments, in timely fashion to the social networks can thus become a major new chore and a new and de facto vitally "necessary" part of the event itself - but it's a chore which potentially could (and usually does, it seems) detract from the very enjoyment of that event. So one now reads reports of "horror holidays", or "horror honeymoons", where what should be a relaxing time and a time to connect with loved ones becomes quite the opposite, due to the overriding compelling objective of attempting to showcase their holiday/honeymoon on (say) Instagram. These people can apparently feel driven by a narcissistic need to prove to the world and be validated - that they are "having a great time” or "look how much we love each other", or similar - and to upstage others ("keeping up with the Joneses"), and so half or more of each precious day might be spent in production - i.e., shooting photos/videos, flying drone cameras, editing, uploading or planning Instagram posts - rather than holidaying, relaxing and passing quality time with and connecting with loved ones. So what's the point of the holiday/honeymoon, in this context?

“It was like a photo shoot for some magazine that would never exist,” said Mr. Smith, 38, a real estate agent in New York, and he didn’t mean that in a good way. He described the weeklong vacation with his new wife, Natasha Huang Smith, as a “sunset nightmare,” “stressful,” “cumbersome” and “torturous.”

...70 percent of brides “post on social media throughout their honeymoon,’ according to the Knot Social Media Survey 2016. The key word there is “throughout.” And the husbands? Maybe they are not into competitive photography to the same degree, for some reason.

“You see other people posting photos of their great vacations, romantic engagements, and exciting honeymoons, so you compare yourself to them and feel the need to do the same thing yourself,” — Gwendolyn Seidman, a social psychologist studying relationships and online behavior and chairwoman of the psychology department at Albright College in Reading, Pa.

Maybe it’s because I am, well, old and also, you know, a religious person, but this passage left me with a question: Is this competitive, commercial and materialistic #HashtagHell syndrome more common between people who have been cohabiting for several weeks and months? In other words, there is no “marriage,” in the old sense of the word, to “consummate.” Each partner may have “consummated” a few or even many temporary relationships in the past. [I find this interesting because of what it tells us about the societal/cultural evolutionary trends/implications.]

"Marriage and life is not a sacred journey with a partner that - sacramentally speaking - helps complete you. Life is a movie. Or a website."

Ian - don't forget the food pics, too. Because we're all on the edge of our seats waiting to see if you'll go for stuffed avocado or fish n chips today. That's just part of a really close relationship.

Meh... If people are stupid enough to ruin an event for themselves by trying to document how much "fun" they are (not) having because they are too focused on trying to get the shot right … Then they deserve to suffer.

Best memories I have are fuzzy because you could literally get shot just for having a camera at those events … But I wouldn't trade a single one for a polaroid of a damn thing.

Perhaps there's one other motivation. As someone with a slight malicious streak and who is soon to come into possession of a brand new baby,I'm looking forward to repaying all those friends who - talked incessantly about their baby- forced me to to look at photos without end of the aforementioned - forced me to look at holiday happy snaps, also without end, which on the bright side, at least made me contemplate orders of infinity- made me listen to their guitar playing.The number of baby photos I'll be posting will be wondrous to behold. Contemplation of the boredom I'm intending to inflict gives me a warm inner glow."Vengeance is mine sayeth the Lord" ... he ain't seen nothing yet.

Well, I can empathise with the food pics, because food is a timeless and natural source of sustenance and pleasure, and people ("foodies") who enjoy preparing and eating yummy foods could enjoy swapping food pix and especially recipes - and that's the motivation (sharing useful information amongst a diverse interest group). For example, I'm married to such a person, and I periodically have to clear out the cache in her smartphone, because it's chock-a-block with food pix and recipes shared/swapped instantly (thanks to modern IT&T) with enthusiastic like-minded folk all over the world. The pics serve a valuable short-term purpose and have a potentially short, but useful life and most of the recipes are usually consigned to memory (if they weren't already in the cook's hippocampus) and can be deleted - i.e., they are not necessarily being systematically catalogued. However, the discussion threads containing these pix and recipes provide a treasure-trove of useful reference information on cooking.Similarly, DC Forum could be regarded as a treasure-trove of useful information on IT&T-related aspects - which brings me to an interesting point about data life-cycle and persistence: If you clear the app cache on a device, then you typically find it automatically deletes most related discussion threads, but that is not so with the Telegram app (runs on Android, iOS and Windows PC client devices). Clearing the Telegram app device cache does not clear the copy that is retained in the Telegram cloud, so the user can always restore that to the same or a different client device. The Telegram cloud data - including discussions and all files (e.g., including audio-video files) - are retained indefinitely (but can be deleted/expunged at any time by the user), but if an account is not accessed within a pre-set period (default is 6 months and the longest is 1 year), then that account and all its data will be automatically expunged.